adventures in modern pagan animism

I’m scared of zombies because I’m queer

Living as ‘other’ and striving towards authenticity, no matter how transgressive is an intrinsic part of my pagan path.

At least that’s how I’m shoe-horning in this week’s theme. I defy easy classification; or, It’s my blog and I’ll go off-topic if I want to. I’m going to be very blunt about queerphobia. Beware.

I’ve always been terrified of zombies; I can’t sit through Romero movies. I have bad anxiety and need to read plot spoilers. Jump scares cause me physical pain.
This is a bit of a paradox. I love horror movies. I’ve been elbow deep in gore. I’m a necromancer. I make distasteful jokes about cannibalism.
I’m terrified of zombies…because I’m queer.

Zombies can be read as various kinds of zeitgeistic metaphors. Debt, unchecked consumerism, unemployment, the failure of the social order.
So why do zombies scare me so much? In their natural environment they are ubiquitous and beyond reason.

Small bands of survivors huddle together in a hostile, resource scarce world against an unending hoard wishing them death. Am I describing my friends on a Saturday night, or The Walking Dead?

I strive to be understanding, logical and compassionate. All the people slinging death threats at me aren’t. They can’t be reasoned with. There is an unending parade of them. They howl and beat on my metaphorical door through the internet. I don’t have enough ammo (resources, time, energy) keep them all at bay. They get through and they wound me. They claim I owe it to them to change their minds.
You can’t cure zombies. Meaningful change must come from within.

Just like a survivor in the zombie apocalypse I cannot ever feel safe. I was born into a social order that was built from the ground up to exclude people like myself. This world was never meant for me. The zombies have inherited the earth.

Like the characters in The Walking Dead, I can try disguises, slathering myself in zombie guts to walk among them. Not living my authentic self is just as unpleasant.

Gross. Image credit: AMC, The Walking Dead.

However I can only hide so much of myself, no matter how hard I try. Violent straight people can smell your fear. The disguise inevitably slips. Is this it? I ask myself during every confrontation, and there are many. Is this the day I die?
Which is going to kill me first, a mishap of fate or illness, or an attacker? Or alternatively, myself, after the vigilance and battle has ground away my resolve until I can no longer fight? Death isn’t a question; it’s a promise.

I catch a snippet of television. A politician is claiming Australia doesn’t have a homophobia problem. My friends can’t get legally married and word is passed around about someone local being near-fatally bashed for being gender nonconforming.

I like to fantasize that humans are rational. I’m often proven wrong. Zombies cannot be reasoned with. If a zombie has broken into my compound and displayed bigotry I try to educate them, but they are too many and too stubborn. It’s often fruitless because zombies don’t want to listen, they want to argue, to gorge themselves on my vulnerability. To feel victimized by my defenses.
I am strong but scarred. My strength costs me dearly. They are relentless. Their self-sanctified opinions do me active harm. For every one I block ten more shuffle forward chanting ‘you don’t exist’. Zombies lack the higher brain function to appreciate the irony. I exist, but if I cease to do so it’s because they have killed me.

Friends and allies mute the groaning from just beyond the wall. But I can still hear it. Queer spaces aren’t perfect safe havens either due to lateral violence; just like in the zombie apocalypse, survivors turn on each other due to the scarcity of resources. Gatekeeping and respectability politics abound. Nonetheless my social justice is intersectional because those survivors in the boarded up building next door? I feel for them, too. I’m not going to use them as bait just so I can temporarily get ahead. Because it’s not a real victory until the war is over.

Zombie media isn’t prone to happy endings. Nor is media in general kind to queers, when we can get them, which is rare. Gays get buried. Women are refrigerated.
I enjoy apocalyptic fiction because it represents a game board hurriedly and messily wiped clear. A chance to start over, and for some lawless, anarchic fun.
The best apocalyptic fiction is queer. Why reinforce heteronormativity when you can have the Gayboy Berserkers and the Vulvalini?

This is not the visage of a straight man. Image credit: Warner Bros, Mad Max 2.

Mainstream zombie media on the other hand is an endless grind with no hope of closure. Awash with an ambient anxiety that is already the background radiation of my life, it’s littered with the same regurgitated heterosexual romances reinforcing current social mores with the flavor, colour and excitement of mashed potato. It’s not meant for me, and never was.

The zombie contagion has spread too far. There is no hope but for homogeneity. In the real world, people say ‘gay gene’ and my friends and I hear ‘eugenics’. We fight to survive and live but sometimes it feels Sisyphean and pointless.

2 thoughts on “I’m scared of zombies because I’m queer”

I found my heart was racing, my upper chest and throat tightened and, when I tried to calm myself, when I could do this enough, I realised my breathing was shallow and rapid. I had too much saliva in my mouth and had to swallow hard. I connected with this piece on a gut level, a visceral level – your writing made me do that. I felt the anxiety of being surrounded, alienated. I’ve never been able to watch ‘The Walking Dead’ despite its reviews. The zombie scenes made me feel really uncomfortable, now I know why. Thank you